Qatar has awarded Italian firm Salini Impregilo a 770-million-euro ($859 million) contract to build and operate a stadium for the 2022 World Cup, the company said Thursday. The company will build Al Bayt stadium in al-Khor city, north of Doha, shaped after the Bayt al-Shaar black and white traditional bedouin tent. The Italian firm said on its website it has beaten competitors from France, Austria and Asia for the contract to build a stadium that could accommodate 70,000 spectators. The contract includes 716 million euro for construction and over 53 million euro for operations and maintenance, it said. In addition, the company won a contract worth 300 million euro to build main urban infrastructures in Shamal, some 100 kilometres (186 miles) from the capital. Salini Impregilo is already working on building part of Doha Metro and a water project. Energy-rich Qatar is undergoing a huge spending splurge on infrastructure, worth around $200 billion, much of it related to the World […]

Qatar paid the African Football Confederation $1.8 million (1.6 million euros) to present its bid for the 2022 World Cup at a congress, the continent’s top football official told a French magazine. CAF president and FIFA vice president Issa Hayatou said he saw nothing wrong with the payment made before the confederation held a congress in the Angolan capital Luanda in January 2010. Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup later the same year at a controversial FIFA vote now under investigation by Swiss authorities. Paris-based Jeune Afrique magazine asked Hayatou about the donation from Qatar. “It was $1.8 million, not one million. Paid in two times 900,000 dollars,” the controversial AFC chief replied. “The Qataris gave it to us to be able to show their plan (for the 2022 World Cu) during the congress.” Hayatou insisted he had not expected other candidates, including the United States and Australia, to pay for a similar privilege. “Not necessarily. […]

Both Russia and Qatar have been cleared of any wrong doing in terms of their bid for the 2018 and 2022 world cups respectively, according to a report released by the FIFA ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert. The report said that there were minor infractions that had indeed occurred during the bidding process, but they were not big enough to justify cancelling the award of the World Cup. “The effects of these occurrences on the bidding process as a whole were far from reaching any threshold that would require returning to the bidding process, let alone reopening it,” Eckert’s statement said. “The assessment of the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cups bidding process is therefore closed for the FIFA Ethics Committee.” While Eckert did not find any fault with the Qatar bidding team itself, while also noting that it had only a distant relationship with disgraced Asian football confederation head Mohamed bin Hammam, Eckert was critical of the English FA for the way […]